THE United Truckers Association said on Tuesday that the Port of Vancouver’s decision to reintroduce the Rolling Truck Age Program (RTAP) “represents impending doom for an institution being crushed by performance metrics.”

Set to launch again in September, the costly measures will put extreme financial burden on container truckers amidst the highest rates of inflation and unaffordability in a generation, the UTA added.

It is also set to cause more supply chain delays for a port that in 2021 placed 368/370 in the Container Port Performance Index, as ranked by the World Bank Group and S&P Market Intelligence, the UTA noted.

UTA spokesperson Gagan Singh said that the Port of Vancouver’s hasty decision comes with a consultation process that “completely betrayed the direction of the Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra.”

“In February, the federal government forced the Port of Vancouver to delay implementation so that extensive consultation with industry stakeholders could reshape the proposed program,” said Singh.

“Instead, we got a process that did nothing more than rubber-stamp a decision and design that had long been established by the Port of Vancouver. The input from the UTA and other key stakeholders, has been essentially ignored.”

The UTA said that the Port of Vancouver increased its coal export volume by 19% to 38 million metric tonnes in 2021, which represents approximately 79,267,906 metric tonnes of C02 emissions annually. This is the equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from 17,079,795 gas-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.

It added that the approximately 1,700 trucks being unfairly targeted by the RTAP represent less than two per cent of BC’s licensed commercial trucks, who face none of the same punitive emissions standards.

The UTA alleged that forcing truckers with fully paid off assets that meet all Canadian and BC standards for commercial operations (in terms of safety, emissions and opacity levels) is punitive against a group that is predominantly South Asian in origin.

Singh said that the UTA’s ongoing calls for Transport Canada to independently study this matter through a working group and with the assistance of scrutiny in the House of Commons pursuant to the Statutory Instruments Act, has been met with complete silence. The lack of oversight over the Port’s unfair and unjustified targeting of container truckers represents gross negligence on the part of the Government of Canada, he added.

“We expected the Minister and his government to properly examine this matter with the care and consideration it deserves. Instead, we have seen politics once again trump sound public policy, and the UTA will not stay silent in the months leading up to the Port’s proposed implementation,” Singh warned.